


the thorns are dull

by dryadfiona



Series: Requests [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Gifts, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Sort Of, background warden x alistair with hints of unrequited warden x morrigan and warden x leliana, totally unedited i wrote this in one sitting during class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26132476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dryadfiona/pseuds/dryadfiona
Summary: Leliana, Morrigan, and meeting somewhere in the middle.
Relationships: Leliana/Morrigan (Dragon Age)
Series: Requests [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2148891
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	the thorns are dull

Leliana thinks that maybe–just maybe–she actually _likes_ Morrigan, and not just because she’s pretty.

Yes, it surprised her too.

Morrigan is mean, casually cruel in a way that Leliana always associated with the worst people in her life. She’s dismissive of Leliana’s visions, even if sometimes she catches the apostate looking at her with something like interest when she talks about it, even if it oh-so-quickly slips into annoyance when she sees her looking, envy when she doesn’t.

Leliana is used to being visible. She is pretty and loves to tell stories and treats fighting like a dance–it _is_ a dance, to her, the twirling and grace all the more fun for it deadliness. Still, she’s equally used to _not_ –to slipping in the shadows, to masks, to a knife in the back and the blood on her hands washed away before she steps back into the light, a nod at her patron from across the room.

Morrigan fights like no one is watching, even though she’s clearly aware of the gaze of the party; Lyna’s concern, Alistair’s mistrust, Leliana’s curiosity. She tears into their enemies with spells and claws with equal ferocity. (Equal bloodshed, too, and when Morrigan smirks at her, after slicing a cut in her palm and dealing the final blow, eyes shining, Leliana tells herself the shiver that runs up her spine is disgust, at her disregard for the Maker, but for all her skills at lying, she’s never been as good as she’d like at self-deception.)

Some fights are as close to the Game as she’s ever going to get again, Leliana thinks–Lyna and Alistair stand side-by-side and chat about the weather, as if Lyna isn’t wielding a sword made from the dragonbone of Morrigan’s mother, as if Alistair isn’t terrified he’ll have to take the throne, and Leliana slips behind enemy lines and back before most of them have even realized she’s there. 

Morrigan turns the marauder she’s stabbing to ice right before Leliana’s blade connects, and Leliana can’t help but beam, and Morrigan doesn’t look at her, after that, but doesn’t say anything mean when she catches Leliana wandering near her side of the camp.

She’s still not even sure why, leaves her a bottle of wine she stole from Wynne as a sort of apology, sort of acknowledgement of solidarity in dealing with their Warden companions, but–

Leliana wants to drink it with her, wants to taste that wine off her mouth. 

The wanting is nothing new to her–Leliana is used to wanting. The taste of sweetness, the scent of a flower half-forgotten, silk against her feet, a woman in her bed.

(The woman used to look like Lyna, all easy smiles and dark eyes and muscle enough to win a war single-handedly, but this last dream her eyes have gleamed honey-gold at her and Leliana woke up in a cold sweat, biting her own wrist hard enough to draw blood to keep herself quiet.)

But that–the wanting is fine. It’s solved by an eyebrow tilted at a duelist and a night that follows, by an all-too-bawdy talk with Zevran, even by slipping away to a tavern and pretending she doesn’t notice when Morrigan’s gaze catches on the bruise in the hollow of her throat.

It’s the rest of it.

Morrigan’s apology–because that’s what it was, an apology–when Leliana came back from Flemeth–her arm had twisted out of its socket, and she nearly collapsed every time she put weight on her right foot, and Wynne had healed it but Morrigan’s face had gone very pale, and she’d woken up with a health potion she remembered Morrigan brewing, weeks back, after telling Alistair she wouldn’t give him anything.

The little frisson of heat that goes up her spine when Morrigan’s gaze meets hers when she sees the teethmark on her arm, a sly comment about if she really was so interested in Morrigan’s methods of fighting there are much better ways to learn than through mutilation, and Leliana had wanted to just shut her up–but instead of doing what she wants to, dragging her back to her tent and showing her what a bard can _really_ do, she says something cutting, and Morrigan looks–actually hurt, and Leliana knows how to hurt, but not to make it better, after.

Leliana leaves her an amulet this time, actually bought and paid for from the Dalish camp, a soft wooden thing with a wolf design that Leliana can’t help but think of Morrigan when she looks at–it’s wild, untamed, but not really cruel, not really evil, even if the elf selling it to her hisses something horrified about the werewolves, about tricksters. Morrigan wears it, and Leliana feels–almost full, when she sees it, like she’s about to burst with the feeling.

Then there’s Marjolaine, and all of that, and Morrigan doesn’t say–anything, and it’s fine. The two of them are not friends, for all that Leliana wants to dress her up and take her to balls (and, on worse nights, follow her into the woods and hear _her_ tales, hear about spirits and the Fade and even demons, because Morrigan has told her her vision was absurd but has followed her through the Fade. (Followed Lyna, is the problem, but Leliana isn’t thinking about that, because she doesn’t want to call into question why she’s on the mission, because it is for the Maker. It is.)

Leliana hears someone approaching her tent, and panics, because she was dreaming of betrayal and fleeing and fear and falling and the noise makes her startle, makes her pull a dagger and lift it before she sees the same golden eyes that have haunted her dreams for weeks now. (Not her nightmares, thankfully.)

Right now, they’re wide, albeit more surprised than terrified. Leliana would be offended, but it’s–nice, to be seen as someone who _wouldn’t_ hurt, rather than as someone only worth hurting.

“Morrigan,” Leliana says, and Morrigan’s nice enough or indifferent enough to not call her on the way her voice catches when she drops the blade.

“Leliana,” Morrigan says, voice low in a way that Leliana already knows is going to stick with her. “I–did not mean to disturb you.”

Oddly formal phrasing, the way it always is when Morrigan’s trying to pretend to be above it all but doesn’t quite manage. “It’s fine,” Leliana lies, and Morrigan frowns, like she can actually see through it, and the reminder of her own powerlessness makes the next words come out with far more acid than she was intending. “Did you need something?”

The little spark of–something, of understanding and of companionship and of amicability–vanishes as soon as she says it, and Morrigan turns to go without another word, and Leliana is tired and Leliana is vulnerable and Leliana is _lonely,_ so she grabs her wrist just as Morrigan is turning back.

Their hands meet over a blade, and Leliana inhales, sharp and quick, when it pricks her finger. She knows the feel of poison, and she’s more offended than scared, that after all they’ve been through, Morrigan would kill her in her sleep, without even the dignity of a reason _why_.

But then Morrigan surprises her, swears in a language she doesn’t recognize and Leliana feels the unique sensation of healing magic under her skin, and the pain in her finger melts away almost as soon as she’s aware of it.

“A gift,” Morrigan says, like the words are impossible to get out.

“Why?” Leliana asks, and Morrigan turns the dagger so it’s hilt first, and Leliana takes it, and Morrigan pulls back her hands–so cold, always, but Leliana feels warm as if she was still by the fire–but Morrigan pulls her hands back like she’s been burnt.

“Powerlessness is not a feeling anyone enjoys,” Morrigan says, carefully avoiding actually admitting she has something in common, with Leliana, and the same defensiveness she’s used to from Morrigan is actually comforting. “I thought you might enjoy–this.”

“I have daggers,” Leliana says, knowing she’s prying. “And poison.”

Morrigan growls, a little too animalistic to be purely human, and Leliana can’t help but grin. “And I have alcohol and jewelry, but you leave me such things anyway. I am not interested in being in your debt.”

“Of course,” Leliana says, the picture of Orlesian grace, and Morrigan’s gaze turns even more annoyed, somehow, the gold of her eyes like the flame.

Leliana’s fairly certain she could step back, bring her to her bunk, and she would follow, if only for idle curiosity–but. Morrigan is offering her something, some level of honesty that Leliana doubts many people have ever seen, and she doesn’t want to pry.

“Good night, Morrigan,” Leliana says, and Morrigan nods rather than answer, and that night Leliana dreams of golden eyes looking at her from outside the walls of a building she once thought of as home, tempting her to leap forward.

**Author's Note:**

> prompt was literally just "fingers brushing together" i don't know what happened!


End file.
